It's Monday. It's raining. And people, tourists in particular, (excuse me, why don’t you just poke out the other eye while you're at it!) cannot walk with umbrellas, so let’s talk Ticketmaster.
Notoriously opinionated and obstinate Steve Albini, a guy ever vigilant and vocal about the wicked ways of the music business, showing up in Austin, Texas, at the annual South by Southwest festival? This I had to see. After a near-miss at his Austin hotel, we spoke the next morning on the phone.
"It was unspeakable on all levels, as bad as I imagined, and in some ways worse."
Any notion that he'd somehow softened, somehow accepted the music biz as it
To write about music, you must first come to terms with your fanboy urges. You must brush off the fairy dust and see your heroes for who they really area picture that in many cases is all too human. Yet that first blush of idolatry is an experience you never quite forget, no matter how many times you interview a person.
There was a time, back in the St. Elmo's Fire 1980s, when Steve Earle's first album, Guitar Town, was an object of abject slobbery for a generation of rock critics. Turning a near-mint LP copy of that album over in his hands, Earle begins to reminisce about a record that changed Nashville and country-rock music and, for many, remains his undisputed career masterpiece.